Tuesday, February 22, 2011

Known?

It takes a big man to admit when he's wrong, the old saying goes.

I've never been a big man. Even at my fattest, I don't know that I could be considered "big." But last night at the Anklevich house, when we were recording for the show, I meant to make an admission as part of an episode. Then we ran out of time, so it went unsaid.

But why not use the blog for it?

My sister was over for President's Day, and she wanted to see a movie. Try as I might, I just couldn't convince her to go see The King's Speech, which I've been unable to get anybody to accompany me to.

So, I asked her what looked good to her. She told me Unknown, the film with Liam Neeson. She said it looked a lot like Taken (and certainly the TV spots and posters have done all they can make that true).

My sister is the only sibling who will go to the movies with me, so I said I'd accompany her. And I guess that makes me something of a hypocrite, because didn't I do an entire episode of That Gets My Goat decrying the trailer to that movie, and proclaiming it so spoilerific as to obliterate any need to ever see the film proper?

Yes, I did. But she's family, and I don't exactly have people breaking down my door to spend time with me. Were the right girl interested, I'd probably go see Transformers 3.* So we hopped in the car and went to see Unknown.

And here comes the uncomfortable part. I quite enjoyed it. Even having seen that damned trailer . . .

(this is extremely difficult to get out)

. . . which didn't give away as much as I'd originally decided.

In that rant about that preview, I compared it to infamously bad trailers for Double Jeopardy and the last one they did for The Sixth Sense, and I stand by my condemnation of those and others like them. They truly do a disservice to the film they advertise. But the Unknown one . . . well, it was somewhat misleading, and some of what it shows turns out to not be what it appears.

So, I was wrong. I said so when Avatar came out, and I'm saying in now. But while I have you on the line, let me take the opportunity to condemn the TV spots that I've been seeing for Unknown the last couple of weeks. They end with a line--one so contrived to be reminiscent of Taken you'd almost think it was from a deleted scene--that is truly and utterly spoilertastic, just as I decried the initial trailer for being. All through the movie, I was waiting for that line, putting the pieces together in my head so that I had figured everything out before the audience was supposed to, and when that line did come, I thought, "Well, there it is, roll credits."

I still quite dislike the initial Unknown trailer, and heartily despise any advertisement that spoils, ruins, reveals, or dumbs down the movie its promoting, but I'm admitting I was wrong about the movie itself not being worth seeing.

I'll leave you now to your regularly scheduled life, but not before anticipating that I will be wrong--AGAIN--about The Social Network winning Best Picture. Not only was I hasty in that assessment, it appears I will be financially punished for it by Las Vegas bookies.

Ah well. Always in motion is the future.

Rish "Big Man" Outfield

*Of course, that'd have to be some woman, and her intentions for after would would have to be awfully unsubtle.